Tuesday, February 6, 2018

On the Workbench: Scratch-built Stirges WIP

Sharing another project I'd like to finish. Stirges are an iconic D&D monster from the Monster Manual somewhat like a cross between a mosquito and vampire bat. They feature in a few AD&D modules I'd like to run and will probably want these in campaign sessions pretty soon.

For that reason, I just did a session with them recently to move them forward to the state you see here. I'm pleased with how they are turning out.

And here's an older pic as it shows the scale, and I forgot to put a figure in the above one.

I sculpted the body and face on a glazed ceramic tile, then brushed the parts with vaseline and made press molds. The assembly line process is to glue the two pieces together, then sculpt the head hair, then sculpt the stomach with four segments and make holes with a pin for the legs. The legs are very thin copper wire I got by unbraiding a bit of insulated wire from trash electronic device. I just glue them in the stomach holes and cut to size after. The probiscus is slightly thicker brass wire and I drill a hole for this, snip and then carefully file the end smooth with a sanding block and fine grit sandpaper.

You can see I'm testing out round vs square bases. I don't have enough of the round, and didn't want to hold up production until I get around to my next laser-cut bases order. Meanwhile, my giant centipedes and giant rats are Dungeon Dwellers on their square, integral bases, so there is some precedent for those. The GF's opinion helped tip the scales over to the square bases. They are mounted on fabric/clothing pins.

I scratch-sculpted these as the limited choices on the market or from yesteryear are either oversized (as in 54mm or even 70mm scale by the looks of them) and/or not that good a match for the MM illustration and description. These I've made are exactly the stirges I want.